MARTIN ANSIN ILLUSTRATES THE IMPORTANCE OF LIBRARIES TODAY

This piece was assigned to Martin by Kevin Henegan of Library Journal, who wrote:

“The author being depicted on our cover is John Scalzi, a popular sci-fi writer. His new book is called Fuzzy Nation, with a sci-fi character Fuzzy that’s been retooled from a 1960s book that was in the public domain. We want to get in the sci-fi genre vibe, but not go so heavy duty painterly to ape sci-fi book cover art too much.

Ansin’s work is a good blend of graphic novel realism with a simpler punchy energy. He’s also adept at rendering real-life people—and we’ve got to present Scalzi and his character Fuzzy with enough similarity to what they really look like. Getting a sense of the sci-fi realm in without being too specific will also come into play in an interesting way.”

Ansin adds:

“This was a difficult job to approach at first, as there were many things that the editors of the magazine wanted to express in the cover. We needed most of all to spotlight Scalzi and work with the idea of his writing transforming an existing character that may not be known to many people. We also wanted to show the debate in his “appropriation” of this character and the book that inspired him to write his version, along with the author’s opinion on ebooks and the importance of libraries.”